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The War for Talent – Are you competing?

Posted by Red Tree on 22/04/15 in In The News, Job Announcements

As a recruitment professional in the 2015 market place, no matter what sector you are recruiting in at the moment, you are most likely coming up against a common obstacle…. experiencing a finite number of people who can actually do the jobs you’re recruiting for! With a significant upsurge in the jobs market across multiple sectors, this does create the old ‘supply & demand’ question i.e. is there enough suitably skilled and experienced people out there to cover the volume of jobs available? Well this apparent lack of suitably skilled and experienced people is creating huge levels of competition for the best talent amongst us recruiters. I feel it is a great thing to see. The first thing that pops into my head is my client/the company is very willing to wait and hold until the best and most skilled individual comes along. This can only be a very positive for the company. But herein lay the difficulty for us recruiters. There is a real requirement now more than ever as a recruiter to evolve with the market, adapt to change and embrace the new techniques that are now being adopted by recruitment leaders who have that ‘ahead of the curve’ thinking ability. This sort of thinking involves coming up with new and innovative ways of finding the people, with digital/social media/SEO methods being right at the forefront. A recruiter’s network and referral base comes into its own too.

However, with all of this said the job seeker can be proactive to make themselves as relevant and attractive as possible to the job they’re interested in. It may be a simple case of tailoring/bespoking their CV. All of that experience and expertise may be bubbling under the surface and simply needs to be released on paper! At Red Tree this is the approach we take with each person we help. We ensure the person fully realises their ultimate strengths and talent, which could be plugged into certain jobs. We ask the correct pertinent questions of the job seeker. There is a real case too in helping the job seeker realise those skills that are transferable into perhaps a different sector/industry and this is what we would establish with each person we meet.

With this war for employee talent raging out there, companies are now biting back when it comes to their current staff. Counter offers are here again! When the time comes for a person to make a move from their employer the company is looking to retain them. During the recent tricky years for businesses of all sizes, if somebody did hand in their notice the person would simply go on their merry way. Majority of the time the person didn’t get replaced and counter offers were rarely made. A full 360 of this is now evident. If a person is a valued member of staff, companies a lot of the time will now pull out all the stops to keep them. Various items of enticement will be showered upon the employee; including salary increases, a promotion, added responsibilities and so forth. This then opens up a new discussion both for the employee and indeed employer. From an employee point of view, there are multiple things to think about here. One main question being has it taken the act of handing in the notice in order to get that recognition/pay rise etc. If the employee decides to stay, how will they feel now that you have looked elsewhere? This can be a hard thing to shake from the mind of your current employer. Future trust and loyalty could possibly be called into question. For somebody to go on a job search, have interviews and be offered a new job, for me there is an inherent problem that the employee has with their current employer, or has decided to move for career progression. By accepting a counter offer, statistics do say that the original issues experienced don’t tend to go away and the person will end up leaving in the next 6-12 months anyway. So in these counter offer situations, and I fully appreciate how difficult a situation it can be, I would always urge that the person has a good think back to why they originally decided to start looking for a new job. Go through the pros and cons, actually write them down! This way of thinking and breaking it all down generally makes the decision very clear and really quite easy for the job seeker to make that all important decision.